A wildlife naturalist and photographer says she’s in disbelief to find out the photo she took of a wolf that she had been documenting for years was being used to encourage trophy hunting.
“I was shocked to see it,” Cheryl Alexander said of the moment she saw Takaya’s photo online.
“I was horrified to see that picture, which is a very, very special picture. That is the iconic photo of Takaya that has been used by people around the world. I was stunned. It was like a gut punch.”
Alexander had photographed the animal a number of times over eight years, after Takaya showed up on an island near Victoria in 2012. According to the wildlife naturalist, local authorities believed the wolf would not survive and cited safety concerns, with debates around shooting the animal.
The wolf eventually swam to Victoria’s shorline in 2020, where he roamed streets for two days before he was tranquilized and relocated to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Alexander says it was months later that he was shot and killed by a hunter near Shawnigan Lake.
Alexander says the hunter’s kill was “deemed legal because he had a standard hunting licence.”
In an effort to raise awareness, Takaya’s life has been documented in a film and in books.
“He now is known around the world as a very significant wolf for advocacy, for conservation of wildlife, apex predators, and also conservation of wild habitats,” the photographer explained.
“Apex predators, particularly wolves, are very significant for the health of the ecosystems. They keep a lot of the other animals in check, in proper populations, and we actually currently don’t know, even on Vancouver Island where Takaya lived — he was a coastal sea wolf — we don’t have a good indication of what the population of wolves currently is on the Island.”
She tells CityNews she came upon the photo by chance online last week.
“I was working with a person from the Humane Society International and we were doing a write up on trophy hunting in B.C. And we’re scrolling through trophy hunter websites where they advertise their services to clients and all of a sudden I saw this one for hunting wolves, and there was Takaya looking out at me, along with three other pictures with smiling hunters holding a dead wolf,” Alexander recalled, noting her horror.
“Oh God, I remember vividly taking that picture and it was a very special moment. And to see it up there next to these dead wolves and soliciting people to come and kill more wolves in B.C., I just felt sick.”
She says the photo, used without her permission, was posted on the Terminus Mountain Outfitters website. As of Monday, July 29, the B.C. wolf page was not active.
Alexander says she emailed the outfitter “immediately,” demanding it take the photo down, noting the company was in contravention of copyright laws in Canada.
While she says she hasn’t heard directly from the outfitter, she tells CityNews she was told by CHEK TV that it had been removed.
B.C.’s Big Game Harvest Statistics show that from 2013 to 2022, an average of 827 wolves were hunted every year. In the province, a species licence is required for non-residents to be able to hunt wolves.
Alexander says she’d like to see more done to clamp down on trophy hunting, pointing to the benefits of apex predators like wolves in the ecosystem. She feels trophy hunting as a whole is an “archaic” practice.
“We have to push really hard for these laws to change because hunters are still going to go out there and do this unless there’s some legal consequence for trophy hunting,” she said.
In 2020, Alexander founded Takaya’s Legacy, a non-profit organization that aims to raise awareness and support wolf protection initiatives.
“People in Canada should make themselves aware of the situation that our wildlife face in terms of the threat from trophy hunting,” Alexander said.
“Trophy hunting is not hunting for food. It is very different. It is killing animals for pleasure and it is killing animals for trophies. We should simply not be allowing that in Canada in this current day and age.”
CityNews has reached out to Terminus Mountain Outfitters for comment.